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• • November 1, 2011 at 7:30 pm #60965
    ShortHills

    Member

    Hello,

    Please forgive the super-beginner question but here it goes. I'm writing a 200+ page manual in MS Word and I'd like to layout the book in InDesign (it will be single pages in a 3-ring binder). I've been watching some Lynda.com tutorials to learn more about the program but I have a specific MSWord to InDesign Workflow questions.

    1. I'm doing all of my editing in Word as one large document. If I bring the text of chapter 1 into InDesign and then notice a typo:

    a. is there a way to link InDesign and Word so that a correction I make to the text in InDesign replicates in my Word document?

    b. or do I just continue using InDesign for further edting of this document (I really dont' want to do this option)

    c. or do I make the correction in InDesign AND make the correction also in Word?

    I'm just trying to figure out how the pro's do books, and I'm trying not to have to reinvent the wheel.

    Thanks in advance for any advice!

    W

  • November 2, 2011 at 5:42 am #60971
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    1a. Yes. This option is off by default, but you can enable it in the Preferences (it's called Link to text files, something like that.)

    There is a very good reason it's off by default! Every time you update the link, the original file gets re-read into InDesign, and that means that all of your InDesign edits will disappear. (I think it's worthwhile to make this point stand out a bit.) Only with a very careful workflow you can seamlessly transfer paragraph and character styles from one to the other.

    1b. Well, it depends.

    1c. Well, it depends.

    “It depends” because you need to decide what you want to do with your Word file afterwards. If you intend to use this (and not the InDesign version) for any other further processing, you will need those edits.

    It's also possible to export your plain text out of InDesign to RTF (although this will not give you the same Word file “with edits” back).

  • November 2, 2011 at 6:12 am #60973
    kidpub

    Member

    You can save yourself buckets of time by properly formatting your Word file with styles. Heading1 for chapter titles, Heading2 for subtitles, Emphasis for italicized text, and so on. If you find yourself clicking on the font box in Word, choose a style instead. That way when you import your Word file into ID the styles will map to ID styles and you can automate things like starting chapters on right-hand pages. Click Show Import Options on the import dialog to get to the import optionspanel, then click the Customize Style Import / Style Mapping button at the bottom to open the mapping dialog.

    If you don't have any styles in your ID document, you'll see New Paragraph Style or New Character Style listed next to all of the styles that ID found in the Word document. That's fine, ID will create the styles for you, and you can go back and edit them later if you wish.

    In our shop our workflow uses Word for copyedit, then we import to ID for layout, and further proofreading edits are done in ID. There's a standard set of Word styles that we use to tag the Word docs. We publish 200 or so books each year, so process efficiency is high on our list of priorities.

    Perry
    KidPub Press

  • November 2, 2011 at 3:55 pm #60976
    ShortHills

    Member

    Thank you both for your insight.

    1. When you talk about keeping things in ID “In our shop our workflow uses Word for copyedit, then we import to ID for layout, and further proofreading edits are done in ID” do you ever go back to the Word document?

    Mine is a 200+ page Word document, so my concern is that if I don't keep my word document up to date, then if later on I add another chapter to the word document, then this word document won't be the most up to date (e.g. if I went from Word to ID, then edited in ID, then needed to add another chapter in Word).

    How do you work around this problem?

    2. Also, all I have in Word are very basic styles. Is there a good way to start fresh with my stlyes in ID? I don't care if ID doesn't bring any of my word styles over? (or should I)? I can easily create and use Word styles, but it really makes no difference.

    Thanks!

  • November 2, 2011 at 4:03 pm #60977
    Tom Pardy

    Member

    I’m just wondering why, if your book includes chapters, they all have to be in a single Word document. Would it not make sense to have each chapter as a separate Word document and then, if you need to add a new chapter, it could be a new Word document? Each chapter can then be placed in InDesign (perhaps even in separate InDesign documents using the Book feature) and laid out as necessary. This would also allow an easy reshuffling of chapter order, should that prove necessary at some future stage.

    Or have I missed a point somewhere?

  • November 2, 2011 at 7:07 pm #60978
    ShortHills

    Member

    No you didn't miss a point. Because this is a training manual, for me from the development side, I find it easier to work with one large word document as opposed to 15 separate documents because I find it easier to print, proofread and to make project-wide corrections (E.g. If I call it the “superWidget” in chapter 2, I want to make sure I don't call it “super widget” in chapter 6 and “SuperWidget” in chapter 9.

    And yes, I do intend to bring each chapter in separately in ID and use the book feature.

    It's just that I'm trying to figure out the best workflow considering that I want to preserve the integrity of my original.

    For example, if after I publish the book (in ID), I find a list of 10 corrections I want to keep using ID for the publication end, but I still want to make sure that my word document is current. If I have to edit in both places I will, but I'm trying to see what the pro's out there do so I don't have to waste time trying to reinvent the wheel.

  • November 3, 2011 at 6:11 am #60980
    kidpub

    Member

    In our workflow, once a book is in ID it never goes back to Word; all of our updates and other maintenance are done in ID. If it's just you working on the material, you'll just need to pick which tool you think you are most productive in for writing. Since your project is a manual, page layout is going to be more important than it would be for something like fiction…I'd be tempted to author in ID, especially if you have a lot of graphics to place, callouts, sidebars, and the like. A disadvantage is that you can't just send off a Word file for someeone to edit…they'd need to edit in ID, or, as we sometimes do, annotate a PDF.

    Regarding styles, it almost doesn't matter what the styles are in Word, since you'll be mapping them to styles in ID. During edit we just use the Word styles to tag elements of the text, not caring what the Word file looks like. You also have the option when you import the file into ID to leave the Word styles in place and import them rather than mapping them to ID styles, so if you use logical Word styles such as Chapter Title, Caption, and so on, they would appear as new styles in ID, which you could edit. I think a common error that folks using both Word and ID make is to spend tons of time trying to get the pages to look right in Word…they aren't going to look that way in ID without a lot of effort.

    If you are committed to keeping the Word and ID content in sync, my advice would be to treat the Word file as unformatted but styled source, and do double edits, especially if the layout is complex.

    Perry
    KidPub Press

  • November 3, 2011 at 6:04 pm #60986
    ShortHills

    Member

    Thanks, Perry. What you said make a lot of sense. There will be lots of “content”, so maybe I will decide to just use ID for future editions.

    Also — could I just export from ID to RTF if I wanted someone to proof?

    Thanks!

  • November 4, 2011 at 1:54 am #60988
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    Totally agree with Perry about not going back to Word, however if you do need to get the text back into a rtf file I can recommend Rorohiko's text exporter plug in, it does a great job all in one go.

  • December 17, 2011 at 10:01 am #61274
    Coal Cracker

    Participant

    There are several good responses to your post, some of which I have followed in the past, say around ID3. However, I got fed up with all the extra attention I needed to pay when making changes and I bought InCopy. I use InCopy as my word processor (when InDesign is the ultimate goal) so I don't have to worry about changes in either one.I even format in InCopy.

    You can save the InCopy file as an rtf should you need to share it with a client.

    ShortHills said:

    Hello,

    Please forgive the super-beginner question but here it goes. I'm writing a 200+ page manual in MS Word and I'd like to layout the book in InDesign (it will be single pages in a 3-ring binder). I've been watching some Lynda.com tutorials to learn more about the program but I have a specific MSWord to InDesign Workflow questions.

    1. I'm doing all of my editing in Word as one large document. If I bring the text of chapter 1 into InDesign and then notice a typo:

    a. is there a way to link InDesign and Word so that a correction I make to the text in InDesign replicates in my Word document?

    b. or do I just continue using InDesign for further edting of this document (I really dont' want to do this option)

    c. or do I make the correction in InDesign AND make the correction also in Word?

    I'm just trying to figure out how the pro's do books, and I'm trying not to have to reinvent the wheel.

    Thanks in advance for any advice!

    W

    ---

  • December 18, 2011 at 11:55 pm #61282
    atwfg828

    Participant

    I would agree that it is best to leave Word behind. I think once you have used InDesign for a while you will never look back. Also the story editor (command + y) is great for giving you an uncluttered space (almost word processor feel) to do your editing.

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